Turning Toward Integrity (The Turning Point)

Rating:
Summary: adequate introduction to book of James
Review: This is the first of what i hope to be a handful of commentaries and studies of the New Testament book of James. It is the current text for our church's Sunday service sermons and as such is automatically a point of study and interest for me. This particular book was mentioned in the first sermon and it was the first i picked up as well.

It is an adequate introduction to the book. A little too quote-heavy, disjointed for my personal taste. It often reads like a series of sermon illustrations than a commentary. For that reason i do not think of it as a strict commentary, where the text is the big point, but rather in this book the text is the launching point to get into the literature and stream-of-consciousness provoked by the verses. There is nothing wrong with this technic, just don't confuse it with hermeneutics or exegesis, it is application, it is expansion, not textual criticism.

It is readable, written at a high school level, presupposes only a committment to the text as the Word of God. It is directed, imho, to pastors or preachers and secondarily to the church at large. As such it probably belongs in a pastor's library for a source of sermon illustrations, and in the adult education program at a conservative church for a text on the book of James.